Spider

I live in an older farm house. The basement has been known to have spiders and an occasional mouse. It is just the way it is.  Over the past 7 ½ years I’ve grown accustomed to those creatures, or so I thought.  I have a war room in the basement (based off the movie with the same name).  It is really just two walls that I painted and claimed as my own.  The cat and I go down there and we pray on a regular basis.  One day out of the corner of my eye I saw, for lack of a better name for it, a “slow mouse.”  I don’t know why but once it disappeared into a crack I didn’t think any more of it.  Not too long after that I saw the biggest spider I’d ever seen right next to my war room wall.  I have exercise equipment in my area as well so I dropped a four pound weight on it.  It literally lifted its legs then dropped them at its side and it was no more.  I didn’t like looking at its carcass so after a few days I threw him away.  I was creeped out by it but apparently not enough to think there might be more.  Then one day I was coming up from the basement barefoot and I thought that one of my stepsons put a fake Halloween spider on the riser of the step almost at the top.  All of a sudden it hit me, it isn’t fake!  I grabbed the nearest boot and smacked it twice.  It dropped off the riser onto the step.  I was still barefoot and I intentionally skipped a step to avoid it. Then I went to get something to pick it up with to show my husband.  I grabbed a tweezers and innocently enough picked it up by one of its hairy legs.  Much to my shock it was not dead, not even close!  A long battle ensued. I’ll spare you the details other than to say it put up a good fight and finally it drowned.

Prior to our skirmish, I didn’t want to leave it alone and get my husband for fear it would “disappear.” And then I would constantly wonder where it was.

Now with the spider on the counter in a tumbler glass full of water I could prove to my family that this is not your typical Wisconsin house spider.  I could not have done this 7 ½ years ago. No, this one was dead but the question remained, “How many more are there?”  I started to feel my skin crawl at every hair that brushed against me, and shook out my shoes and clothes before I put them on.  I sprayed the basement and at least I didn’t see any more.   It started to change my life as I walked down in the basement carrying a hammer. My imagination was starting to get the best of me. 

I’m in a Bible study that is teaching us to look for the beautiful in the ugly.  To try to find the beauty and His grace in the middle of the messy stuff.  Well, those spiders qualified as ugly, but to find a treasure in the midst, I wasn’t so sure.  I googled fear of spiders from a Christian standpoint and I was reassured I wasn’t afraid of spiders in general I just didn’t want these huge ones in my house.  The article I read posted a Scripture from Luke 10:19 which I quote all the time when I need to be brave. “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.” Okay it was in my face, either I believe it or I don’t.  So I was lying in bed feeling crawling things, which weren’t there, unable to sleep and I finally asked the Lord, what am I supposed to do about this? He gave me a brilliant practical solution: there are a lot of boots, shoes, jackets, hats and gloves in the hallway and stairs that are not being used and creeping me out because I’m imagining the spiders hiding under them.  Don’t give them a place to hide. I thought that was a great idea.  So with my hammer handy and one of those old person tools they use to grab things I started picking up shoes and forcing jackets into plastic bags and tying them shut until I can wash and dry them. Seriously, I was thinking if they won’t drown in the washer they will perish from the heat of the dryer.

I kept thinking, what is the beautiful in the ugly of this?  God made spiders. That did me no good.  Then I remembered one of the ladies in Bible study was going to start her own war room because in telling them about the spider I’d mentioned it.  Well, that sure is a beautiful thing.  If nothing else the reason for the creeping out was so my fellow sister in Christ would start a war room.  That was good enough for me, it was worth it. 

As I was cleaning out the hallway, with rubber gloves on and spraying each boot with spider killer I asked the Lord,  “I get it in the natural that I’m feeling better about removing their hiding places but what does this mean in the spiritual?”  The thought came to me about how a basement is the foundation of a home.  And I had a responsibility to keep it in order.  Not that I had actually neglected it but the environment needed to be maintained.  For instance, the Trinity is my foundation and it is good to go revisit it as there could be cobwebs that creep in and I lose my focus and open doors for the enemy.  Don’t give him a place to hide. Then I remembered a Scripture from Isaiah 33:6, “He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.”

He is my foundation, I need and feast off the riches from His storehouse, and there is my treasure, the fear of the Lord.  I don’t think He was saying that I’d gotten a little casual with Him but a loving reminder that He is not only the foundation of my life, but of the earth, the cosmos and everything before time as we know it.  If I was getting casual, that refreshing realization just changed it.  It’s funny but He took the time with only two or three spiders, (I hope it was only two) to gently teach me He is my treasure.